A Little Bit of Body Work Can Save Your Brain From Boredom

All animals are basically information transformers. Brains crave change in information flow, and this is largely driven by sensations arising from muscle actions and movement.

People are animals, too, and need to move. Yet, lots of scenarios in modern life mean we often have to sit for prolonged periods, even though we know this impacts energy and brain function. It's easy to get overwhelmed trying to make movement part of a healthy lifestyle, but there are many small things that can be done to try and moderate the perils of inactivity and prolonged sitting.

Sitting Is Bad for Butt and Brain Blood Flow

A lot of research shows pretty clearly that sitting around for prolonged periods has a negative effect on cognition and executive function and associated changes in blood flow to the brain. A nice way to counterbalance this is to break up sessions of sitting by getting up and being active. But sometimes, it's just not feasible to get up for even a 15-minute walk. So what can we do?

Very little work has looked at real-life minimal and feasible efforts that folks might be able to do to try and at least offset the negatives of sitting in a seat.

Squat It Out

Researchers Masahiro Horiuchi, Alexander Pomeroy, Yukari Horiuchi, Keeron Stone, and Lee Stoner from Japan, USA, and Wales studied the "effects of intermittent half-squat exercises during prolonged sitting on executive function." Twenty men and women in their early 20s were asked to sit for three hours or sit for the same duration but do one minute of "half-squats" (15 repetitions) every 20 minutes. Half-squats were done smoothly without stopping and with crossed arms and knees bent to 90 degrees. Executive function, arousal, and fatigue were assessed, along with measures of cerebral blood flow.

These researchers found that "compared to uninterrupted sitting, exercise interruption suppressed sitting-induced reductions in cerebral blood flow and impairments in executive function." Simple half-squat activities, which could be done at most workstations or desks, preserved "cognition during prolonged sitting."

Muscles Move Your Body and Brain

The takeaway here is that to save your brain from neurobiological boredom, stand up, get your muscles going every now and then, and start to think of sitting as part of your interruption of standing. Especially in light of our reliance on technology in modern society, in the larger context, please continue to encourage and feed your animal nature.

For optimal function, your brain needs changes in information flow. In the current context, that's information about moving and all the sensory signals that arise from even the smallest change in activity state and position.

Many of the sensations associated with movement come from moving itself, but also from the activity state of the muscles that produce the movements. So, even the act of contracting a muscle without major movement still leads to a huge ensemble of sensory activation in the nervous system. Remembering to put your brain and body in motion is a critical maintenance factor for physical and cognitive health—these little actions can lead to lots of benefits.

(c) E. Paul Zehr (2024)